by Laila Lalami
Nora
I had gone to the cabin to escape squabbles with my family, but the cabin presented a challenge of its own: it was so quiet that it seemed to me I could hear the beating of my own heart. I wasn’t used to the desert, at least not anymore, and after a while I got into my car and went looking for a place to get a drink. I’d never been inside McLean’s, and it surprised me to see how busy it was at barely six in the evening. I took a seat at the bar. A couple of tourists in hiking clothes and wide-brimmed hats were huddled over a single menu, debating whether to get plain or garlic fries. Three seats down, a man in blue overalls was scratching at a lottery ticket with a house key. Across from me, a couple of bearded men were conversing quietly over their beers. The bartender was mixing cocktails and didn’t look up when I tried to catch his eye.
“Nora,” a voice called from behind.
I swiveled on the barstool and my purse fell out of my lap, spilling its contents—keys, mace, some change, a tube of lipstick I didn’t remember buying, an enameled pill box, my cell phone. It was a fantastic mess and Jeremy Gorecki stood over it, embarrassed. “I’m sorry,” he said, picking up my things from the floor. “I didn’t mean to startle you like that.”
“It’s okay.” I took the purse from him and zipped it up. “What are you doing here?”
“I was about to get some dinner. Want to get a table?”
“I was only getting a drink. Or hoping to anyway.” I glanced at the bartender, who was refilling a beer for one of the old men and paid me no notice. “All right.”
I slid off the stool and followed Jeremy to a table by the window. In a T-shirt and jeans, he looked younger than he had in the button-down shirt and pants he wore when he came to the house. As a matter of fact, he was a year younger, I realized; I’d been held back that one year in kindergarten. When he motioned to the waitress, she came over right away, pulling out her notepad from her apron. She was a blonde, busty woman in a tank top and black jeans, and spoke with a smoker’s gravelly voice. “What can I get you, hon?” she asked him sweetly. He opened his palm toward me.
“Could I have a gin and tonic, please?” I asked.
“Sure thing. Anything to eat?”
“No, just the drink. Thank you.”
“I’ll have the burger, medium, with fries,” he said. “And a glass of water.”
“Coming right up, hon.”
The waitress left. I slipped my purse off my shoulder and hung it on the arm of my chair.
“How are you holding up?”
A question I had been asked by my roommate and friends a few times already, and for which I still had no answer. Since my father’s death, it was as if my life had stopped and I remained stuck in the same moment, the same place. “I’m not,” I said with a shrug.
“I’m so sorry, Nora. I know how devastating this is.”
There was so much kindness in his voice. For a moment, my eyes pricked and it seemed as though tears were finally coming, but somehow the feeling passed. I rested my chin on the heel of my hand and looked out of the window for a while. The sky was the color of peach. Cars passed now and then on the highway. A delivery truck pulled up in the middle lane and the driver climbed out to deliver a package. How odd, at this late hour. “He left me all this money,” I said, turning to look at Jeremy. “Can you believe it? Me, the fuck-up.”
“You’re not a fuck-up.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know fuck-ups. Trust me.”
The waitress came back. “Here’s your gin and tonic. And here’s your hamburger, hon. Ketchup and mustard are right there. Can I get you two anything else?”
“No, I think we’re good,” he said.
“You didn’t want a beer with your burger?” I asked.
He squeezed ketchup on the side of his plate. “I don’t drink.”
“At all?”
“No.” After a moment of hesitation, he said, “I get really bad insomnia. It was taking five or six drinks to get me to sleep, and after a while even that many weren’t enough. I didn’t like where I was headed, so I stopped.”
“And the insomnia is gone?”
“Well, no. It comes and goes.”
I stirred the ice with the little black straw and took a big sip, all the while watching him. He sat with his back straight and ate quickly, though nothing about his composure suggested he was in a rush. It was so strange running into him at McLean’s. I hadn’t thought of him in ten years, and now I’d seen him twice in a week. It struck me that this was yet another consequence of death, that it disturbed long-established patterns, even something as insignificant as this. Outside, the delivery truck was gone, leaving a clear view of the strip mall across the street. A woman was closing up the nail salon, testing the locks with both hands before walking away to her car. “Isn’t that where the ice-cream parlor was?” I asked, pointing to the salon.
“They tore it down a couple of years ago and rebuilt the whole thing.”
“I used to go there with Sonya Mukherjee after Spanish class.” In high school, Sonya and I had few friends. We were the only girls in the jazz band; we had last names that teachers always shortened to an initial; we celebrated holidays that were not listed on the school calendar; we were cast as the Magi in the Christmas play every year, despite our protestations that we were girls, always the Magi, with flowing white scarves covering our long hair, and robes dissimulating our budding breasts and hips. We were both thought to be Muslim and Sonya often had to say, No, no, I’m Hindu. Then in September of our sophomore year, two planes were flown into the World Trade Center and strangely that distinction seemed to matter less, not more. We were both called the same names. Ragheads. Talibans. Sometimes, raghead talibans. In Spanish class, at least, we got to be brown kids among other brown kids, an anonymity we craved all the more for its new rarity. After an hour of conjugating verbs—yo me voy, me fui, me iba, me iria, me ire—we often went to get ice cream.
“I remember,” he said.
“You were in Spanish, too?”
“No, I worked at the ice-cream parlor two days a week.”
“Right. Sorry.” An image came back to me now, blurry and yet also solid, of Jeremy Gorecki standing at the cash register in a white polo shirt and red apron, waiting to ring up our orders. I felt the heat rising to my cheeks and was conscious of him noticing it. For a moment, I was quiet, thinking about those long-gone days. Whatever happened to Sonya? She had gotten into NYU and sent enthusiastic emails for the first few weeks, but I hadn’t heard from her in years. I’d have to look her up someday.
“I remember one time you and Sonya got into such a giggling fit you knocked down the spoon rack. The whole place was a mess.”
“For the record, Officer, it was the cup display, and we got kicked out for that.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“But you never got into trouble.”
“ ’Course I did.”
“Like what?”
“Kid stuff. I can’t think of anything specific right now.”
“Because there wasn’t any,” I said with a smile. Oh, God, I thought, I’m flirting with him. But it was a distraction from the intolerable fact of loss and the constant feeling of grief. His face was familiar—he had the same blue eyes, the same prominent nose—yet adulthood had made it new again. And the last ten years had clearly left their mark. There was a new hardness around his jawline, tempered by the early signs of crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes.
I finished my drink and motioned to the waitress that I wanted another one.
“What’s it say?” he asked, looking at the tattoo on my wrist.
“It’s Latin. ‘A voice crying out.’ ”
He reached across the table and touched the inside of my wrist, then turned my hand toward the light to get a better look. “Any reason?”
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��I went to a rally out in the Bay Area when I was in college. Remember the law that would’ve made felons out of undocumented immigrants? Back in ’06?” He seemed on the verge of saying something about the rally, or the law, but instead he drew back his hand and waited for me to finish the story. “Anyway. When the police ordered us to disperse, I couldn’t find a way out and I got arrested. They put me in zip ties and had me sit on the curb while they waited for transport. It was my first protest, and I couldn’t believe I was getting arrested. All of a sudden it dawned on me that I’d need to be bailed out, my mom would find out, I’d have an arrest record. I kept telling myself I was fine with that, but the truth was, I was scared. Terrified, really. I was sitting there with my head on my knees when one of them asked me how old I was. I said nineteen. He asked where I went to school. I said Stanford. And then he cut off my ties and said, ‘Go home, kid, and mind your own business.’ I was so relieved to be let go, I didn’t think to tell him that this was my business. Everyone’s business.”
“I’m sure he knew you weren’t much of a menace to society. And he probably hated being there as much as you hated getting arrested.”
The waitress brought a fresh G&T. I stirred the ice in my glass and took a sip. The juniper spirit was doing its work; my stomach felt warm and the knot between my shoulder blades was starting to loosen. I was glad to have run into Jeremy, it was better to have company than to drink alone. “So you like being a cop?” I asked.
“There are good days and bad days.”
“Do I sense some disappointment in our hero?”
“Well, you teach high school, right? I’m guessing it’s kind of like that. Sometimes it’s fantastically rewarding, other times it’s horrible. But the pay is great and I have a good schedule. Three days on, three days off. I fixed it so I can go to school on my days off. Do you want some of my fries?” He slid his plate to the center of the table.
“No, thanks. I’m not hungry. What kind of school?”
“Copper Canyon. I’m about to transfer to UC.”
“Didn’t you get into Cal State?”
“I dropped out after a semester and enlisted.”
“Wait, what?”
“I joined the Marines.”
“Wow.” After a minute, I asked, “Where did you serve?”
“Iraq.”
It had seemed strange enough that Jeremy was a police officer, but it struck me as utterly peculiar that he’d been in the Marines. Across the expanse of the table, I looked at him with new eyes. The long fingers that had once gracefully stretched across guitar strings to play an F sharp had held an automatic rifle and pointed it at people in another country, a country that had done no harm to his. The eye that had once winked in mischief as he passed notes in class had calmly observed human targets through a riflescope. The voice that had softened as he told me he’d joined the Marines had barked instructions over a headset or a bullhorn. In our desert town, there were Marine flags on houses and yellow ribbons on cars. The grocery store was festooned with banners that said WELCOME TO OUR TROOPS. Most of the kids in our high school sat for the ASVAB. So it shouldn’t have surprised me so much that Jeremy had enlisted, and yet it did. I couldn’t reconcile the memories I had of the stuttering boy in grade school with the reality that he was an agent of the state. “But why?” I asked.
“I wanted to study speech pathology, but when I got to Cal State I hated my classes and didn’t do well in them. I felt like a complete stranger on that campus. Like I didn’t belong. I was just, I don’t know, not going anywhere with school. And we were at war. It seemed like the right thing to do.”
“Invading Iraq was the right thing to do?”
“That’s not what I meant,” he said quickly. “I just meant, I’d always wanted to serve. My grandfather was a medic in World War II, and my dad was in the Army Reserve for a while, too. I was eighteen, I guess I wanted to be a part of something bigger, like them.”
An awkward silence fell on the table.
“You sure you don’t want any fries?” he asked after a minute.
“I’m sure. Thanks.”
I touched the charm of my necklace, my father’s gift to me for my high school graduation, and which I’d pulled out of the jewelry box in my bedroom the first night I got back, a protective talisman in the shape of a hand. I felt worn out all of a sudden and wanted desperately to be alone, to return to my grief, in solitude and without interruption. Beads of water had formed on my glass of gin and the black napkin underneath was soggy. Two tables down from us, an older woman pulled out a red lace fan from her purse and cooled herself with it. At the back of the restaurant, the waitress was refilling saltshakers, nodding along with the song that played on the stereo. Only when she noticed my insistent stare did she finally bring the check.
“I got it,” Jeremy said.
“No, it’s all right.” I put money down and he did, too, pulling a bill from his wallet and walking out of the restaurant behind me. Outside, the last rays of sunlight painted the white blooms of yucca shrubs a deep orange. It was very quiet.
“You really shouldn’t be driving, Nora.”
“I’ll be fine.” I crossed the parking lot to my car, and he followed.
“Why don’t you let me drive you home?”
“There’s no need. I’m just going three or four miles.”
“Nora.”
“What?”
“I can’t let you drive. You’re, what, five-foot-three and a hundred-and-ten, a hundred-and-fifteen? You had two drinks in less than an hour and you didn’t eat anything.”
Hearing all this spelled out made me feel exposed. Vulnerable. All I wanted was to be alone again. I got in my car, but he held the door open with one hand. A familiar fear settled in the pit of my stomach. “I’m fine,” I said, my voice turning uneven. “Really.”
“Come on, Nora. Let me drive you. You can get your car tomorrow.”
I got out of the Prius after a moment and followed him, holding my purse against my chest like a shield. He eased his Jeep onto the 62 and was heading toward my parents’ house when I asked him to turn around and gave him directions to the cabin. “So you’ll be in town for a while, then?” he asked.
“For now,” I said, not wanting to explain that I couldn’t stay at the house with my mother and that I needed time to think through what I was going to do next.
Five minutes later we pulled up to the cabin. My mother was sitting on the porch, waiting. Great, I thought. Just great. All of my energy went into looking sober and alert. “Thanks for the ride,” I said and got out without waiting for an answer.
My mother stood up, her hands on her chest. “What happened?”
“Nothing, Mom. The battery in my key went out. I couldn’t get the door to open.”
“I told you not to buy a hybrid. They’re not reliable.”
“Okay. You were right.” A meaningless concession to avert an escalation.
Inside the cabin the smell of mint tea hung in the air. A stack of Tupperware containers, each filled with a different dish—grilled peppers, chicken with carrots, a fruit salad—sat on the kitchen counter. The realization that my mother had been inside the cabin finished sobering me up. “What’s this?” I asked, pointing to the Tupperware.
“You called Triple A?”
“I’ll call them tomorrow.”
“And who was that man? He looks familiar.”
“What’s all this, Mom?”
“I brought you something to eat.”
“You didn’t have to.” I dropped my purse on the sofa. That was when I noticed the flower arrangement on the mantelpiece. Some years ago, my mother had taken up arts and crafts and spent most of her afternoons working on one project or another. Her latest hobby was dry-flower arrangements; this particular incarnation involved pink and white roses laid out in the shape of a heart. A heart
! On the other end of the mantelpiece three black vases stood like sentinels. “Mom. There’s really no need for any of this. I can take care of myself. And besides, I’m not staying long.”
“But this place is so empty. You don’t like the dry flowers?”
“No, they’re pretty. Very pretty.”
“Then why don’t you like them?”
“It’s just not my sort of thing.”
“Your sister loves the one I made for her.”
Of course she did.
My mother went to the mantelpiece and switched the vases and the flower arrangement around, then stepped back to assess. “Better?”
I sank into the sofa, defeated.
Jeremy
We barely spoke on the drive to the cabin, but the silence between us was different now. Everything had changed. I took my time turning the Jeep around, watching until she went inside. How good it had felt, talking to her about the old days. How beautiful she had looked, sitting by the window at McLean’s with the last light of the day on her. And how warm her eyes had been, before she’d found out I’d fought in Iraq, before she’d been forced to ride with me, before she’d seen her mother waiting on the porch. Nothing would be the same again.
This was how it had felt, too, ten years ago, at the field trip to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Mr. Mitchell had organized it as a reward to the jazz band after our performance of “Coconut Champagne” at the district-wide concert. I was excited to go, mostly because it meant getting out of town and skipping the other classes. But the trip was scheduled for the day after my mother’s birthday. March 13. Though it had been three years since her passing, March 13 was still an agony. My father had started drinking at breakfast. I had my driver’s license by then, but he refused to give me the wheel when it was time to go to the cemetery to visit her grave, so I sat in the passenger seat, keeping a watchful eye on the road while Ashley sat in the back, picking at her nail polish. Afterward, we went to a taco joint my mother had once declared the only authentic Mexican restaurant in the Mojave. When we returned home, my father dropped us off at the door and said he needed to run to the Home Depot to get some electrical wire and a couple of light-switch plates. “Be back in an hour,” he said. But he didn’t come back in an hour. Or two. Or five. I made dinner, checked that Ashley had done her homework, and insisted that she go to bed by ten. Around midnight, I called the police, then the hospital, but no one had arrested a Mark Gorecki or admitted him to the emergency room. It was three in the morning when I finally heard the garage door open. I turned off my bedside lamp and tried to go to sleep, facing the wall. Sitting in the music room that Friday morning, waiting for Mr. Mitchell to take attendance and collect permission slips for the field trip, my only focus was to stay awake long enough to make it onto the school bus.